It was five years ago this month that ESA’s GOCE gravity-mapping satellite finally gave way to gravity, but its results are still yielding buried treasure – giving a new view of the remnants of lost continents hidden deep under the ice sheet of Antarctica.

New work confirms that nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth's atmosphere, becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets.

Researchers have confirmed a correlation between the movement of plate tectonics on the Earth's surface, the flow of mantle above the Earth's core and the rate of reversal of the Earth's magnetic field which has long been hypothesised.